Columns

If the presidential election process didn’t begin in Iowa, ethanol would likely be a memory.
But because the election process begins in Iowa, where nearly half of the corn grown is converted to ethanol, most Republican candidates, who make a career of denouncing crony capitalism, have come to embrace the ethanol mandate, even as they decry Obamacare for forcing Americans to have health insurance.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before,” said Rahm Emanuel in November 2008.
Is it possible this policy is being factored into decisions and actions taken by our county officials?
Case in point

Supporters of a national constitutional convention, as provided for in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, have gained the support of 27 state legislatures for the idea. They need 34.
Republicans and Democrats are at war both with each other and within their own parties over the proposal. Some Republicans want such a convention for the purpose of getting a “balanced budget” amendment.
Some Democrats also want a convention for the purpose of overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and regulating political campaign spending.

Gone but not forgotten. Longtime teacher and coach Lawyous Smith departed this life on March 11, 2015, in Covington, Ga., where he had been living since 2012.
In 1963, Smith was hired as the third and final head football coach in the short history of Hillside High School.

Following the arrival of spring each year, our nation renews its commitment to our priorities on Tax Day, April 15, from education to health care, infrastructure and national defense. Included among these expenditures are nuclear weapons programs – weapons that cannot and must not ever be used.

Saturday was always big for us young’uns on the farm, and it was no different the last Saturday in June 1954.
If it wasn’t raining, Saturday was always washday; and our work load was cut by one-third since Daddy had a well drilled. No more hauling water from the spring and no more boiling clothes in wash pots. Mama had a used washing machine, and the sisters really liked it until the wringer tried to swallow one of them’s arm. Big young’uns were hanging clothes on the line while us little ones were putting socks and our underwear on bushes to dry.

The pilot was locked out of the cockpit. That phrase finally revealed the full horror of the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525.
Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, in his single-minded madness, couldn’t be stopped because anyone who could change the jet’s disastrous course was locked out.
It’s hard to imagine the growing feelings of fear and helplessness that the passengers felt as the unforgiving landscape rushed up to meet them.

The Lancaster County fiscal year 2015-16 administrator’s recommended budget was posted on the county website on Thursday, April 2, and presented to the County Council’s Administration Committee the same day.
In a surprising development, the serious difficulties in the Lancaster County criminal justice system are not adequately addressed in this budget, as they were not addressed in the 2014-15 budget.

As a former law enforcement officer, I have seen firsthand the unfortunate effects of meth on South Carolina. While meth production is undoubtedly a national issue, S.C. policymakers and law enforcement cannot ignore the threats presented by the influx of meth coming into the United States from Mexico.
According to the DEA, 90 percent of meth found within American borders was produced in Mexico. Between 2009 and 2014, the amount of meth seized at the Mexican border increased by over 500 percent.